In keeping with the theme of the comment you're replying to, writing better-performing code and providing performance options are not mutually exclusive. Both are good ideas.
> This feels like your car having the option to burn motor oil to show a more precise clock on the dash; you don't get kudos for adding an off-switch for that.
(Sounds more like you're arguing that it should be forced off instead of being an option? Reasonable take in this case, but not the same argument.)
I think we all agree there needs to be some additional power draw for the seconds feature, but it’s unclear how much power is truly necessary vs this just being a poor implementation.
There's an ungodly amount of CPU and GPU spikes throughout the OS which make the "omg seconds" invisible in comparison
My expectations of Microsoft software aren't terribly high. I'd say Windows is performant (ie it works about as well as I expect).
I actively don't want to see seconds; the constant updating is distracting. It should be an option even if there were no energy impact. (Ditto for terminal cursor blinking).
Energy isn’t free.
Even if they wrote more performant code, it would just mean less relative loss of energy to show seconds but still loss compared to not showing seconds.
I'd rather them write more performant code. This feels like your car having the option to burn motor oil to show a more precise clock on the dash; you don't get kudos for adding an off-switch for that.